


Boarding the Zazztrain to Zazzville

by hatebeat



Series: Putting the gears in motion [5]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatebeat/pseuds/hatebeat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1981. William Murderface's decision to become a musician was mostly an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boarding the Zazztrain to Zazzville

_Tennessee. August, 1981._

"Cuz! Cuz, you in there?" 

William scowled as John pushed the bathroom door open. "I'm trying to take a piss in here! What do you want?!" 

"Hey cuz, look what I got for ya," John held up a pair of tickets. William squinted at them, zipping his shorts back up.

"Tickets? For what?" It was probably some kind of prank. John was always pulling pranks on him, so he sure wasn't about to act like he was excited about anything.

"The show! I've been talking about it for weeks!" 

William groaned. "That stupid clown show?"

"They're not _stupid clowns_ , Will, they're _Zazz Blammymatazz!_ "

William elbowed his way past John out of the bathroom. "That just makes it worse. What a stupid name for a bunch of clowns."

To be honest, he was kind of intrigued. He had never been to a concert before, and his cousin had been really excited about this band coming for at least a month. Not a lot of bands played around here, so it was kind of a big deal. He kind of wanted to go... but he wasn't going to admit that, not if John was going to turn around and call it a joke or something.

"C'mon, cuz," John grabbed his arm. "Julie can't go now and I don't want to go alone. So just go with me."

William crossed his arms, acting put out. "Well, fine. I guess if you beg me like that, I have no choice."

John said that they had to go get in line early, so he got changed and they headed out. On their way out the door, though, his grandma stopped him.

"William, where do you think you're going?"

"I'm taking him to the Zazz Blammymatazz concert, Gram," John said, ushering William out the door.

"An eleven year old doesn't need to go to a rock and roll concert, Johnny!"

"Aw, piss off, Grammy. I'm almost eleven and a half!" William shouted, jogging to John's car.

"Stop us if you can catch us!" he heard John call out, laughing, not far behind him.

William's enthusiam didn't last long, though. Once they got to the venue, John had to drive around for ages to find a parking spot, and it was so far away that they had to walk ages to get to the line, which was also an eternity long. And it was hot outside! 

He made his complaints well known to his older cousin who mostly ignored him, but he did buy him a bottle of water to cool him off. There was something worse than the heat, though, that even a bottle of water couldn't cure.

"There are people here dressed _like clowns,_ " William scoffed with the highest level of disdain he could muster.

The inside of the venue was even worse in regard to the clowns, but William was kind of getting excited. Well, everyone else was excited, so it was hard not to be! It wasn't like it was his fault. He had never listened to this band, so he didn't _really_ care or anything, but when the dumb clowns came out on stage, he couldn't help getting swept away by all of it. He'd never seen anything like it, never heard anything like it. He couldn't see for a lot of it because he was younger and therefore shorter than most of the people there, and that pissed him off more than anything!

In the car on the way back, John played a Zazz Blammymatazz tape, and William listened to it without saying a word the whole way home. He felt... strange. Interested in something. He wasn't sure he had ever actually been interested in anything before now. Not really.

\---

The next day, he did his chores early and without complaint. He didn't even say anything to his grandma when she yelled at him, just ignored her entirely while replaying all of the concert from the night before in his head. When he was finished, he went down to the basement where a lot of grandpa's old things were stored, things he couldn't use anymore since the stroke. 

William had seen it countless times but had never once given it a thought because he just didn't care. There was a guitar down here. When he found it, he grabbed the case, went upstairs, and headed out the back door. He took it all the way into the empty barn before sitting down to take it out.

He spent about an hour plucking at it before deciding it was too hard to play the stupid thing, and he put it back in its case and gave it a good kick. But then he leaned it carefully up against the wall.

\---

It was a week later when he shoved open the front door of his Uncle's house and went in. He was hoping that John wasn't home or something, because he was here to take some of John's cassettes and he didn't really want him to know about it. He didn't want him to know how much he had liked that dumb clown concert. The more time that passed since the concert, the more ashamed he felt about it. It was really embarrassing that John even liked those dumb clowns; he was sixteen and should know better! At least William was still young enough that maybe it was okay to like clowns! Not that he _did_ like clowns or anything, but _if_ he did, it would be far more acceptable than a sixteen year old liking clowns!

Although, everyone at that concert had been way older than him...

Anyway, it wasn't even about the clowns. It was the music. It had been exciting and fun and William just somehow... wanted to be part of it in a way that he didn't really understand.

His Uncle's house was quiet, so he assumed nobody was home, and walked right in when he got to John's door. He was definitely not expecting to hear a pair of gasps and two ashamed and scared faces looking at him. John was on his bed with his girlfriend, Julie, and they were naked. He was _doing things_ to her.

The shock on John's face, though, quickly subsided to make room for anger.

"What the hell, cuz! Learn to fucking knock!"

"You never knock at our house!" William shot back. "And anyway, it's not like I wanted to see any of this!"

William could see his fucking dick! For fuck's sake! Though for some reason, he couldn't look away...

"Just get out!" John yelled at him.

"My pleasure," William scowled and slammed the door shut. 

William tried to get those images out of his brain while he went downstairs. His uncle was probably at work, but he had no idea where his aunt was. She didn't seem to be home. Since he couldn't take any of John's tapes, he went to their den to see if his uncle had any music that looked interesting. He and John weren't supposed to go in his uncle's den, but William knew he had a stereo in there because sometimes William would come over for dinner, and his uncle would go to his den afterward and William could hear music playing from it.

The den wasn't locked, though, so that was a pretty stupid way to keep them from going in. In fact, William didn't even feel badly about it. Just like he thought, there was a big fancy cassette deck in there, and a record player, too. But what caught his eye more than that were the instruments over in the corner. They were two guitars, but one was longer and had less strings. Well that was kind of cool; if it had less strings, maybe it would be easier to play? He'd been trying to play his grandpa's acoustic guitar, but his fingers kept getting so confused. There were too many strings on it! So this was it, he just needed less strings! He could learn to play this- it would be way easier.

Fuck his uncle. He took the longer, four-stringed guitar from his uncle's den and walked right home with it.

He didn't remember that he was supposed to have looked for some tapes or something until he was back home in his room with it. Who cared? He'd definitely be really good at a guitar with less strings, so he could probably make way better music than anything on those tapes, anyway.


End file.
